A model-driven approach for the fast prototyping of web applications

This paper presents an approach for the model-driven fast prototyping of Web applications. The approach exploits well known Model-Driven Engineering frameworks and technologies, such as Eclipse EMF, GMF, and Xpand, to enable the design of a Web application and the automatic generation of the code artifacts implementing a ready to deploy prototype of it. The approach allows to effortlessly and quickly carry out a modeling-generation-validation process in order to validate and refining the design of a Web application before actually implementing it. The paper describes the approach and the process followed to define it, the supporting tools and the technologies used to develop them, and the results from a case study of designing and generating the prototype of a Web application for on-line note taking and sharing. The process and the technologies used to develop the proposed approach can be reused to develop a fast prototyping approach for a different design model and a different target technology platform.